casualties at Verdun, on both sides, had reached
700,000. Opinion in Germany, at first so confident, wavered and
dropped. Why not break off? But the dynasty was concerned. Fortune,
_toute entiere a sa proie attachee_, drove the German Army again and
again through lanes of death, where the French 75's worked their
terrible will--for no real military advantage. "On the 10th of March,"
says M. Henri Bordeaux, "the enemy climbed the northern slopes of Fort
Vaux. He was then from two to three hundred metres from the
counter-scarp. He took three months to cross these two to three
hundred metres--three months of superhuman effort, and of incredible
losses in young men, the flower of the nation." The German strategic
reserves were for the first time seriously shaken, and by the end of
this wonderful year Petain, Nivelle, and Mangin between them had
recovered from the assailants all but a fraction of what had been lost
at Verdun. Meanwhile, behind the "shield" of Verdun, which was thus
attracting and wasting the force of the enemy, the Allied Armies had
prepared the great offensive of the summer. Italy struck in the
Trentino on the 25th of June, Russia attacked in June and July, the
British attacked on the Somme on July 1st. The "wearing-down" battle
had begun in earnest. "Soldiers of Verdun," said Marshal Joffre, in
his order of the 12th of June, "the plans determined on by the
Coalition are in full work. It is your heroic resistance that has made
this possible. It was the indispensable condition, and it will be the
foundation, of our coming victories." "Germany"--says M.
Reinach--"during ten months had used her best soldiers in furious
assaults on Verdun.... These troops, among the finest in the world,
had in five of these months gained a few kilometres of ground on the
road to the fortress. This ground, watered with blood as no field of
carnage had ever been, which saw close upon 700,000 men fall, was lost
in two actions (October 24th--November 3rd and December 15th--18th),
and Germany was brought back to within a few furlongs of her starting
point.... Douaumont and Louvemont were certainly neither Rocroy nor
Austerlitz; but Verdun, from the first day to the last, from the rush
stemmed by Castelnau to the battles won by Nivelle and Mangin; Verdun,
with her mud-stained _poilu_, standing firm in the tempest, who said:
"They shall not pass!" _(passeront pas!_), and they have not passed;
Verdun, for the Germans a charnel-house, f